Wednesday, August 3, 2011

[Comic title: tattoo; alt text: I calculate that the electrons in radiation therapy hit you at 99.8% of the speed of light, and the beam used in a 90-second gamma ray therapy session could, if fired with less precision, kill a horse (they did not let me test this).]

I guess Randy is trying to make cancer sound badass or something? Jesus Christ. Is this supposed to be funny? Are we supposed to laugh at this description of radiation therapy? Or are we supposed to be like 'DUDE SO INTENSE I WANT CANCER NOW?' What the fuck is the goddamn point of this festering shit pile?

I wasn't actually expecting Randy to make so damn many cancer comics. Maybe one every now and then. But this much? I'm left with the conclusion that Randy has decided to make xkcd a cancer webcomic.

This isn't unprecedented. In fact, Mom's Cancer, a webcomic which was expressly about someone's mother's cancer, was created in 2004. There have been some other internet projects which are basically documenting a disease. It's the sort of thing I'm quite confident Randy has come across before. And these projects are often touching and insightful looks at terminal or chronic illnesses.

I don't know why Randy has made this decision, or if these are the only two cancer comics he'll make ever again (but, I mean, come on). It could be that he is cynically hoping to generate a larger audience by trolling for sympathy. Maybe he thinks that this project is putting a new spin on it somehow, or otherwise that it is a legitimately interesting place for him to take his (and I use the word loosely here) art.

What I do know is that if this is Randy's idea of an interesting take on the subject, we are in for a shitty, shitty ride.

There are two ways this can go. Either he eventually alienates his readership, causing them to quietly file out while he keeps making comics where Megan is declaring that "I HAVE DISCOVERED HOW TO LIVE FOREVER" because cancer cells are immortal, or XKCD fanboys just suddenly become cancer enthusiasts. The XKCD store will be full of t-shirts that say "man, fuck cancer," with the word "seriously" on the back, or shirts and prints which bear the dot pattern that Megan has on her chest. Prints of the terrible infographics he produces like the lanes comic, and the forthcoming Map of Cancer. There will be astrological and geographical puns about Cancer and the tropic thereof.

Either way, sanctimonious fanboys will continue to berate us for having the gall to dislike xkcd while Randy has something bad going on in his life.

On an unrelated note: does anyone else get the impression that Randy actually thinks barbed wire tattoos are hardcore?

I was going to post this in the previous post's thread in response to that final forumite's comment, so fuck you rob for posting on time for once in your fat miserable life.

People who lack even the slightest bit of knowledge about fiscal policy (or even worse, know only the slightest bit) and comment on economic matters are the most idiotic group of piece-of-shit assholes to ever stride the earth. Yes, assface, that's exactly how inflation works.

Actually, despite normally facepalming three times a week upon typing those 8 (sometimes 4) characters into the awesomebar, I thought this was pretty good.Good enough for it to be a really, tremendously shitty SMBC.

The true story behind the comic is probably his girlfriend going "hey, check out my awesome tattoo" and him going "haha you're so brave and sexy it's too bad about your allergy to all forms of intimate contact from anybody except Dr. Henry" while thinking "I can use this concept. Oh, the things I will do with this concept."

This strip shows what a self-centred asshole Randall really is. At no stage during any episode-of-serious-shit have I suddenly decided that everyone else should be unhappy and put their whimsy in the context of whatever it is I am going through.

Indeed, one great part of growing up is that serious problems don't trigger the "OMG crisis everyone stop!" - they may induce strong emotions but you deal with them carefully and calmly. Randy, of course, has not grown up. And this strip is either an extremely cynical way of milking his audience or an expression of his reinforcing his child-like behaviour.

Let me put it bluntly, Randall, you stupid fuck: 1 in 3 people get cancer. Almost everyone by his late 20s will know someone in their extended family or circle of friends and colleagues who has endured non-trivial cancer. It's not like cancer is a single specific disease: it's an umbrella term to describe shit going wrong at a cellular level and that wrongness spreading.

It is difficult to make general statements about cancer, except perhaps that ignorant, emotional laymen tend to view cancer almost religiously as some sort of demon. Randall's recent writing exposes him for what he is: an ignorant, emotional layman. Like "government" to a libertardian or "businessman" to a pinko, the word "cancer" is a trigger for the simple.

It's like it's killing the parts of her that are holding her back from going beyond the normal and turn into a superhero or some shit. But actually it's just going to kill parts that make her back to our level. She's below us, guys. Look down.

When my grandad was dieing I was working in a call centre. I was working whilst he was in hospital and then when it got so serious that they knew there was nothing more they could do, I took a few days off work to visit him and get my mind straight.

I feel like what Randall's doing would be like me going into work every day and during every call somehow manageing to awkwardly mention that currently a relative of mine was going through cancer. I could force the issue into the calls, but it'd be awkward, out of place, not really relevant and I don't think it would help in any way.

I can understand cancer being on his mind but putting it in his comics isn't helping him and it's certainly not making me want to read XKCD: Cancer stories.

What bothers me isn't the cancer (it's no taboo) or that it's juvenile to whine to everyone in the universe about your drab, depressing life (it's a webcomic evolved from some kid doodling in his notebooks). What bothers me is the sanctimonious "educational" attitude posing as a sense of wonder.

I just learned something about cancer and I'm going to share it with all you jerks who, like me, couldn't have known anything about cancer twelve minutes ago. Oh, thank you!

Probably a drawing of Megan's vagina in the first frame, and the next three frames just have the word "CANCER" in them, and the last one says, "CANCER, BITCHES." And to make them look more emo, the words will be in white and the background will be black.

Assholery and stupidness aside, I HATE that "glaring close-up" panel. I get seriously puzzled wondering if Randall truly thinks that the faceless characters are an "awesome trademark of awesome", or if he realises how awfully ugly they can look but realises that, if he starts drawing faces now, a lot of fans will be way too shocked.

On second thought, if Randall drew even the most simplistic smiley-face on one of his characters, the sycophantic fans would go nuts with "THATS AWESOME RANDALL IS A REAL ARTIST".

Hey Rob can I send in a guest review of the latest Penny Arcade comic because I felt it read just like a shitty XKCD? The one about Mass Effect 3? I'll pretend like it's another one of Randall's "gurlz r tough gaiz!" abortions in the review. That's, like, satire man. Maybe it'll be funny!

no, but it seems churned out and XKCD-quality. Panel 2 and 3 are both "Are you a bimbo?" "No, I will beat you up!" And that's the punchline. It reads like yet another one of Randal's comics in which the superior female stick figure belittles or outsmarts or turns out to be more sensible than her male stick figure companion. Yet another one of Randall's comics about how funny female-on-male abuse is. Okay, except PA's was female-on-female, but still.

Well, now that I rethink it, I guess it's a statement on the perception of BLOND women. Since that's literally what the comic is about; people perceiving blond femshep as stupid and unfit to be the official femshep. And making an unfunny comic about how blond women can be intelligent, tough individuals seems like something Randall would do.

I thinks this one suffered from context. If it came out of nowhere, it might have been funny, but we already were thinking "cancer Cancer CANCER Cancer CANCER Cancer cancer" so it just isn't that impactful. Also, he should remove the last panel. The black panel is the punchline.

It's kind of "A Softer World"-esque without the last panel, albeit a bit wordy.

I have to disagree with Fernie, in that I think the facelessness, for once, might actually be a positive in the closeup in this one.

Funky, did you read the journal thing Tycho puts up? The comic was a reaction to stuff like this, where people bizarrely complain that having the default female Shepard be blonde demeans her character, because that would make her a bimbo.

I don't think the comic is about feminism, it is just about the absurdity of that point of view.

Waaahhhhhhh! I'm being forced to read this comic! Waaahhhhhhh!There is nothing else for me to do on the internet but read this thing that I hate so mucH! I'm a loser and I have no liiiiiiiefffeee Mooommmeeeeee it huuuurrrrttttsss wwaaaaahhhahahahahahaaaaaaaa!

Also: If a comic on the internet is making you want to give up chemo, you really need to re-examine your priorities in life. And maybe join a therapy group on the side. And definitely grow the hell up.

11:34, I'm sorry. I couldn't hear you over the childish whining emanating from the rest of this site. Now if you'll excuse me, I have an actual life I need to go back to, while you all stay here and gripe endlessly about some meaningless webcomic that nobody is forcing you to read. Guess which of us has their heads on straight, Skeezix.

934: Did you notice the subtle gag that the stick figures are indistinguishable because they are featureless stick figures lololol? On a more serious note, though, following is an incomplete list of things that are not done in browser: file management, watching films, editing videos, playing games, all the Office things like text documents and graphs, computer security... oh yeah, and DRAWING FRIGGING WEBCOMICS! Seriously, how do you fuck THAT up?

Okay, you can't do this in a browser, for pretty good reason. Unless you've got a Chromebook, but that's an exception that exists since with a Chromebook you've only got a browser.

>watching filmsYou can watch films on YouTube now! Watching films you already own/have copies of on your file system, no, you probably want to do that with a proper media player.

>editing videosYou can, to an extent, also do this on Youtube- cutting and pasting together clips, anyway. There's also that ridiculous/annoying 'xtranormal' thing people like to use. Certainly nothing as sophisticated as actual video editing software, though.

>playing gamesSure you can, unless you only count things like GTA and Modern Warfare as 'games', there's plenty of games you can play in the browser and entire archives (like kongregate) dedicated to the concept.

>all the Office things like text documents and graphs

Google Docs is pretty great stuff and is quite capable nowadays. It's largely sufficient for doing most things with- although I'm not a huge fan of leaving my private documents with Google.

>computer securityIf you do everything through a browser you don't really need it. Antivirus software and firewalls largely exist to protect you from the 'running attachments you get in emails' kind of computer security threats. Although browsers have vulnerabilities now and will likely continue to have vulnerabilities in the future, people are far more likely to be tricked into running something in native code.

Okay, I'll grant you all that, but what I meant by the webcomics thing was that Randy obviously doesn't do his own webcomic exclusively in-browser (and I can't imagine that many others actually do), which makes me wonder how he arrived at the conclusion featured in this latest comic.

Dudes, I don't know about Macs but Windows bases its interface on Internet Explorer and has been doing so for a very long time. Just because you don't specifically open up your browser to do things doesn't mean you're not using a browser.

Guys, did you know that Kindles are based on printed books, and have been for a very long time? Just because you don't specifically open up a printed book to read things doesn't mean you're not reading one.

- Everything Randall writes is an insincere ploy to expand his readership or force his opinions upon his readership.

- As "victims" of Randall's comic, former XKCD followers are entitled to revenge.

- XKCD Sucks followers are "survivors," and the last bastion of hope against Randall's onslaught of comics.

- Randall deserves nothing less than heartless mockery and complete hatred. Only a deluded fanatic would disagree.

- If you hate XKCD hard enough, you can change it.

This website is very silly, but I hope it fulfills a need in your lives. Without a webcomic to hate, you might turn to racism or homophobia. We should all thank Rob for his tireless work to prevent hate crimes. Blog on, troubled souls.

@ALT-F Oh, you think you're so clever that you've discovered my real name. Well, it's supposed to be obvious. It's just to put the stupider info-collecting bots off the track. I'm very cautious on the Internet.

Fact: Xkcd has no black characters.Fact: Randall aims xkcd at the supposed "intellectual" people of the world.

Randall believes black people are intellectually inferior. He provides no characters for them to relate to (microfact: black people can only relate to black people), besides the obviously mentally crippled "black" hat man.Therefore: Randall is a racist.

Fact: Many of Randall's comics deal with women's rights.Fact: Randall often portrays men in a negative light.

Randall believes homosexual men are an atrocity (2 men is twice the negativity). While he puts women on a pedestal, the equally effeminate (fact) homosexual male is not mentioned at all. Comic 631 (considered the greatest xckd by fans and non-fans) not only does not show a penis, but does not show two strong and proud homosexuals engaging in sodomy.Therefor: Randall is a homophobe.

Rob, your critique is awful. I used to love coming here (even though I also love xkcd) because occasionally you had something useful or insightful to say about the webcomic. But recently your comentary has degraded to the point that what you have to say is nothing more than, to use your terms, a "festering shit pile". Your thoughts are moronic and offensive, possibly you have put even less effort into this than Randall does into his works, and the fact that you have slammed every single one of his cancer comics - which I think many of us found very touching - makes me hate your soul. Even your asinine attempts to rip off BTAF's antics don't amuse me anymore. Please stop doing this until you actually have something a little more than 3rd grade profanity to offer us.

Jon Levi: Different profile. So technically I could be an imposter. And by "technically" I mean "the profile dates back to July 2011 and the real Raven is probably long gone except for registered ventures into IRC".

"Jon Levi: Different profile. So technically I could be an imposter. And by "technically" I mean "the profile dates back to July 2011 and the real Raven is probably long gone except for registered ventures into IRC".

I feel sorry for people who do not possess the capacity for satire and mockery. Go read some fucking Voltaire. But then again I imagine the brainwashed of the Church thought Voltaire was a "sad soul" and a "childish whiner."

The importance of the towel can be understood. In order to grasp the thin air only after washing your hands, please try to imagine every single time reaching for the towel. Initially embarrassed for your lack of towel. I understand that lack. Life without a rack next to the vanity top is truly frustrating experience.Accessibility is a feature of modern society. When we need it desperately, where is the ubiquitous towel? That is; if we need to dry our hands after washing them, it should not escape us. These racks are to have access to the towel, that is their main feature. Spend a day without the rack, and you are connected; you may not understand otherwise when it comes to discomfort and dissatisfaction.

If you use text speak on Facebook while at they keyboard nobody will ever love you. They might have sex with you, they might even marry you if they get you pregnant, but they will never truly love you.

Captcha: dedening. The process your soul goes through once you start typing text speak on any interface that isn't a phone's number pad.

@12:50: Spoken like someone who envies those with a better grasp of language.

FWIW (loltxtspk), the most eloquent writer of English I know is my mathematics PhD supervisor. The man is a seamless polyglot, always willing to expend the effort to make himself clear to peers and underlings. I try to follow his example.

I like that he thinks the phrase "artistic liberals" is on the same level as "pseudointellectual dropouts." Not sure what's meant to be insulting there.

I always love when people try to defend their poor grasp of the English language as if it's not desirable to be able to accurately express ideas--as if the communication of concepts will happen regardless, so fluency is at best superfluous. Most of them seem to think that it's actually undesirable. Like language isn't a remarkable thing and a vitally important element of humanity, but is rather just some tool that they use only reluctantly--and God forbid they learn how to use it effectively.

So they continue to perpetuate a world where people can't be bothered to communicate effectively, and then they get offended when people are unable to correctly interpret the barely-coherent sentences they hamfistedly string together, never once considering that maybe it's their own damn fault.

It's nice to know that your zealous determination to hate xkcd, and your twisting around of each installment to suit your preconceived notion that they all suck, has not been affected by a little thing like the author's fiancée going through a horrific disease.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

Frequently Asked Questions

Divided into two convenient categories, based on whether you think this website

Rob's Rants

When he's not flipping a shit over prescriptivist and descriptivist uses of language, xkcdsucks' very own Rob likes writing long blocks of text about specific subjects. Here are some of his excellent refutations of common responses to this site. Think of them as a sort of in-depth FAQ, for people inclined to disagree with this site.